Many decisions are influenced by some element of uncertainty. It is often valuable to take actions to gather information that may, at least in part, resolve uncertainties associated with a decision. Some calculation methods associated with determining the value of perfect or imperfect information are known from prior art. For example, the application of decision tree techniques may enable the derivation of expected values of information associated with an information gathering action. These methods typically require significant manual modeling efforts.
Experimental design or “design of experiment” methods are also known from prior art. These are methods of organizing experiments, or more broadly, any type of information gathering actions, in a manner so as to maximize the expected value of the resulting information, typically in accordance with constraints, such as an action budgetary constraint. For example, factorial matrix methods are a well established approach to scientific experimental design. These types of design of experiment methods typically require a statistician or other human expert to manually establish the experimental design parameters, and the proper sequencing of the experiments.
Making inferences from information attained as a result of experiments or, more broadly, information gathering actions, is well known from prior art. For example, in the prior art, a wide variety or statistical techniques are known and may be applied. These statistical techniques generally require some degree of interpretation by a statistician or other expert to be applied to decisions. And, in the prior art, a limited ability to automatically conduct experimental or information gather actions is known, but the application is invariably constrained by the requirement of human intervention to interpret interim results and adjust the experimentation accordingly.
Thus, in the prior art, each of the steps of determining expected value of information, of experimental design, of conducting experimentation, and of performing statistical or probabilistic inferencing from new information generated by experimentation, requires significant human intervention. Furthermore, in prior art processes, there does not exist an automatic feedback loop from the inferencing from new information step to the value of information and experimental design steps. This introduces significant bottlenecks in addressing and resolving uncertainties associated with decisions efficiently and effectively. This deficiency of the prior art processes and systems represents a particularly significant economic penalty in situations in which large amounts of relevant information is already available, or can be gathered rapidly. For example, high throughput experimentation methods can enable rapid acquisition of new information. However, manual bottlenecks may effectively limit the actually attainable throughput of such experimental infrastructure, and, more generally, limit the most effective use of available historical information.
The economic penalties associated with prior art decision processes are particularly acute in business processes such as product and/or service research and development, for which the manual interventions required in decision processes diminish both the efficiency and the effectiveness (measured in both quality and timeliness) of the decision making.
Hence, there is a need for an improved process, method, and system to resolve uncertainties associated with decisions.